One becomes attached to both threads of these increasingly-intertwined worlds. When the two men finally meet, the film comes to a heart-pounding standstill.
American Gangster is fluent in the gangster-film dialect, yet it exceeds the genre's norms. Mob movies tend to present larger-than-life portrayals of corrupt America from the perspective of separatist immigrant families. American Gangster brings this genre not only down to reality, but also into another America: It's about a black mobster and a Jewish detective. There is a running joke throughout the film that Lucas can't be a real mob boss because he isn't Sicilian. Occasionally a suited don walks out of The Godfather and into Frank Lucas' office, and is put in his place.
The film resists glamorizing the world of mobsters or glorifying violence. Though splattered with shots of loaded needles puncturing bruised arms and topless, emaciated women cutting dope, shock value is not the film's focus. American Gangster is socially situated, exposing frightfully depressing projects and lonely overdoses. It tracks heroin from a Thai poppy field through a complicated process of trafficking, moving, and dealing. It is also historically situated: television screens loom in the background, blaring the failing American effort in Vietnam.
Both Roberts and Lucas are men of principle who work hard despite an ailing America. Now, thirty years in the future, our country is still shipping young men home in coffins, the suits are still corrupt and drugs still flow through our veins. Should we just throw our hands up in defeat?
American Gangster suggests a different course. The movie champions Richie Roberts and Frank Lucas for their dedication to "American" values. Perhaps it is simply the consequence of having sat in the dark for three hours, but one emerges from American Gangster with a renewed belief in the existence of American morality, a feeling that despite everything, individual actions can accomplish something - a surprising sentiment to be found in a gangster flick.
I have the DVD, Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe, am willing to lend it :-B
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People are very inclined to set moral standards for others.
~Elizabeth Drew, The New Yorker, 16 February 1987
One becomes attached to both threads of these increasingly-intertwined worlds. When the two men finally meet, the film comes to a heart-pounding standstill.
American Gangster is fluent in the gangster-film dialect, yet it exceeds the genre's norms. Mob movies tend to present larger-than-life portrayals of corrupt America from the perspective of separatist immigrant families. American Gangster brings this genre not only down to reality, but also into another America: It's about a black mobster and a Jewish detective. There is a running joke throughout the film that Lucas can't be a real mob boss because he isn't Sicilian. Occasionally a suited don walks out of The Godfather and into Frank Lucas' office, and is put in his place.
The film resists glamorizing the world of mobsters or glorifying violence. Though splattered with shots of loaded needles puncturing bruised arms and topless, emaciated women cutting dope, shock value is not the film's focus. American Gangster is socially situated, exposing frightfully depressing projects and lonely overdoses. It tracks heroin from a Thai poppy field through a complicated process of trafficking, moving, and dealing. It is also historically situated: television screens loom in the background, blaring the failing American effort in Vietnam.
Both Roberts and Lucas are men of principle who work hard despite an ailing America. Now, thirty years in the future, our country is still shipping young men home in coffins, the suits are still corrupt and drugs still flow through our veins. Should we just throw our hands up in defeat?
American Gangster suggests a different course. The movie champions Richie Roberts and Frank Lucas for their dedication to "American" values. Perhaps it is simply the consequence of having sat in the dark for three hours, but one emerges from American Gangster with a renewed belief in the existence of American morality, a feeling that despite everything, individual actions can accomplish something - a surprising sentiment to be found in a gangster flick.
I have the DVD, Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe, am willing to lend it :-B
___________________________________________________________
People are very inclined to set moral standards for others.
~Elizabeth Drew, The New Yorker, 16 February 1987